Andrys Onsman

​Andrys Onsman is a Higher Education consultant and adjunct Associate Professor at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music at Monash University. He has interests in international higher education, particularly the Middle East, South East Asia and China; “soft” political power, especially the intersection of diplomacy, education and social media; Indigenous education and Art as research. As well as publishing extensively in journals and presenting at numerous conferences, he has authored three books, Defining Indigeneity in the Twenty First Century; Cross-Border Teaching and the Globalization of Higher Education: Problems of Funding, Curriculum Quality, and International Accreditation and Truganini’s Necklace. Together with Rob Burke he edited Perspectives of Artistic Research in Music. He conducts curriculum and professional development programs around the world.

Most Recent Articles

In an address to the Congress of Party Leaders last year, President Xi Jiping said “Higher education must adhere to the correct political orientation” and that universities should be transformed into “strongholds that adhere to party leadership.”

Few of us were surprised by the revelations made on Four Corners, Australia's investigative current affairs program, that alleged that several universities engage in ethically dubious practices when it comes to recruiting international students.

Mao resorted to publicly belittling the academy. The last thing President Xi wants is to belittle Chinese universities, considering that he and his predecessors have worked so hard to build international stature for the institutions.

It’s impossible to predict what the world will look like in 30 years. China may well have assumed global pre-eminence by some measures, but it’s difficult to see that Hong Kong will retain the academic freedom of the past and be viable as an international education hub.

Christopher Pyne, Australia's Minister for Education, suggested that “We have much to learn from our friends in the Unites States” when he proposed that the government deregulate fees and charge real interest on student loans.

The experiment with uncapping student numbers at Australian universities has been in operation for two years but despite the predictions of falling standards, there has been no significant change in retention statistics.